A Load of Hooey Read online

  Famous Quotations—Unabridged

  “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. But that might just be me being stupid.”

  —Albert Einstein

  FREE SPEECH FOR ALL!

  Below is a FREE speech that you can use for ALMOST ANY EVENT. Please give me credit for it if anyone asks, but I’m not going to charge you anything…it’s on me!

  Just STEP UP TO THE MIC AND BEGIN:

  Well, they said it couldn’t be done. But look, just look at all of you! Heroes. A roomful of heroes. You’re all astronauts, right? I was told I would be speaking to a roomful of astronauts today. Okay, that’s fine, I’ll still talk to you people. You look enough like astronauts. My main point is this: they said it couldn’t be done! They did. But look at all of us, right here, right now. It’s being done.

  That’s not all they said, though. They also said, “Why try?” And: “Don’t bother!” Also: “There’s no point!” They called it “a waste of energy, time, and planning!” Naysayers! One person even said, “Nay”! What’s his deal? Does he think this is the Middle Ages? Forget that guy!

  Oh, but they said other things as well. One guy said, “I think it can be done but I won’t help. I’m too busy—I’ve got to pick up laundry and yadda yadda yadda.” I didn’t hear the last part of what he said—I had headphones on. The point is, that guy is NOT HERE right now. Screw him.

  One lady said, “I think it can be done, but I don’t want to clean up afterwards!” That lady IS here today…ma’am, will you stand up? Where is she? I can’t see her. You cowardly witch! Lady, you don’t have to clean up because we’ll all clean up! Right, everyone? No…Okay, I got a better idea, let’s just not make a mess, then NO ONE has to clean up. Sound good? Good. Now shaddup, lady!

  Now, let me address the guy who brazenly told me that he knew it could be done because—and this took some real cojones—because he’d already done it! No. I don’t think so, pal. I don’t think you already did it, because then it would be done and what would be the point? There would be no point. But there is a point and it is this: It can be done. We can do it. We’re doing it.

  But I’ll go one step further. I think it can be done in record time. Today. Starting…now! So thank you for being here, thank you for believing, screw the naysayers, and LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH!

  A HAZY CHRISTMAS MEMORY

  Sweet Christmas!

  As I entered Momma’s kitchen I smelled the sharp whiff of crushed pine needles swaddled in strains of cinnamon, the aroma of baking cookies—cinnamon cookies!

  Wait, no, hold the phone, there were no cookies. We couldn’t afford cookies that year.

  But there were almonds! Yes, I recall a whiff of almond, as aperitifs were distributed amongst the becalmed adults.

  Scratch that—it was BEER! Almond-scented beer. That’s why we couldn’t afford the cookies—we needed to buy the Christmas beers!

  On third thought, there was no almond scent! The beer smelled like beer. In fact, the beer smelled like old beer. The adults were drinking (and spilling) beer! That’s what I smelled—I’m almost sure of it!

  Maybe someone was eating almonds. That must be what it was—almonds and beer. No, wait, nuts and beer. Or a nut mix—that had almonds in it. Yes, I can stand by that—beer and beer nuts were the smells that wafted about my excited nasal receptors.

  Blessed Christmas!

  We didn’t have a real tree—so nix that pine smell. PINE-SOL! Yes, that’s what it was, the dagger-sharp scent of Pine-Sol emanating from the bathroom. This was on a Wednesday…or possibly Thursday. It was definitely one of the days of the week, that I can say with some degree of certainty, and Christmas was nearby, or in the recent past.

  Oh, Christmas.

  I’ll be honest, I don’t remember stuff very well. Except for regrets. I’ve got a photographic memory for regrets, which it turns out is unnecessary and burdensome. Still, for your amusement, I will keep digging…

  The sounds of Christmas! Such sounds!

  A cacophony of voices! Seven children jostling and fumbling through a mound of winter clothes, shouting plans for a busy snow day. “That’s my glove!” “That’s my boot!” “Give me some room, I’m try’n to get dressed here!” “Somebody just kicked me in the teeth!” A police siren, somewhere in the distance. Or possibly in the driveway—my godfather was a cop who liked to drink and “play” his siren.

  But oh, it was cold out! Bitter! Or maybe not so bad. It might have been warm. Let’s go with “lukewarm.” It was a fine, Christmastime lukewarm outside, so us kids didn’t spend too much time getting dressed, and there wasn’t any snow. I know for a fact that we did fight a lot. Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe we weren’t fighting at all—maybe we were caroling. Yes, that’s what it was, the sounds of children caroling. Sounded like a bag of cats.

  The family, always the family, at Christmas!

  Each of us took on a special task. I was assigned to spend the day with my aunt Frank on a search for a Christmas staple—mint chocolate candies to be frozen to a cold crisp.

  My aunt Frank, who smelled of tea and cement, wore saggy jeans and a tattered Chicago Bears knit cap with the logo half-fallen off. She was either a man or a lady of such wizened age that one didn’t publicly comment on her sex. She lived alone, or with another old man-woman, downtown, in a neighborhood that had once been ethnic but was slowly becoming…less ethnic.

  finders, beepers!

  As Aunt Frank and I traversed the town we would munch on warm egg-salad sandwiches. She would chew and chew and describe her latest visit to the doctor and I would watch her jaws roil, frothing with bits of white and yellow and pickle. Damn you for making me remember this! Anyway, I think she was a man in the end.

  Off we would go on our appointed rounds. We would drive around town in circles, searching for these waxy chocolates that had somehow, by accident perhaps, become a custom in our house (along with the beer-drinking I mentioned). Eventually we would find the damn things and bring them home to a gentle chorus of baffled burps.

  Holy Christmas!

  And if I’m not mistaken, there was a story told each year, a fairy tale about someone named “Jeebus.” I’m getting his name wrong, I’m sure. Josey. Jesus. Jesus H. Chriminy! That’s it. What a strange name. He lived long ago, and he spent his life trying to find the brightest star in the sky. He made the first zombie! And though he was a man full of joy and love, at the same time, this man—whom I never met—was deeply disappointed in me on a very personal level. Yes, this Jesau fella had something against me. Which makes no sense, I know, so I can’t be remembering it right.

  Anyway, Christmas…was that really what we called it? Bottom line: there was a lot of disco music, a tree got knocked over, and there was a naked man dancing barefoot in the snow. That’s all I’m sure of right now.

  Famous Quotations—Unabridged

  “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. You won the frickin’ lottery, man. You’re rich! It wasn’t even that fun to ‘play’—all you did was buy a stupid ticket!”

  —Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)

  BASEBALL PLAYERS’ POEMS ABOUT SPORTSWRITERS AND SPORTSWRITING

  “ELEGIAC”

  What does the word

  “elegiac” mean?

  What about “pastoral”?

  And “contemplative”?

  Why do you

  Keep calling

  Baseball all these weird French names?

  Stop it.

  Douchebag.

  THE BLANK PAGE

  Fat fingers dance across

  the clattering keyboard

  Grinding out meaning

  Ennobling the actions

  Of real men doing something tangible

  for a living

  And not sitting on their asses

  “analyzing” shit.

  Pathetic.

  SPRING TRAINING

  A gin and tonic for breakfast, />
  plenty of sunscreen,

  a note pad.

  A hot dog.

  Fat ass

  Planted in the stands.

  Taking it all in,

  gorging yourself.

  SPRING TRAINING pt. II

  Later, alone

  in a motel room,

  farting.

  INSTANT ANALYSIS

  We played hard

  We lost

  End of story.

  You, however,

  are the real loser.

  Famous Quotations—Unabridged

  “The Buck stops here. Seriously, I will not give you even one buck, this one stays right here, in my hand. I don’t care if you’re a girl scout and I already ate half the cookies, I’m the president, I can eat any cookies I want and I DO NOT PAY.” —Harry S. Truman

  THE ORIGIN OF “BLACKBIRD”

  Paul McCartney was generally seen as the generous, “upbeat” Beatle. However, some claim he had a well-hidden dark side: envious, resentful, belittling. If that’s true, it rarely showed. Evidence of this tendency in McCartney can be found in abundance on the day he premiered the song “Blackbird” to the other three Beatles. Unarguably a masterpiece, it was also written and arranged by McCartney alone. Legend has it that “Blackbird” came to “Macca” fairly easily and completely, with almost no conscious effort on his part. Despite being a solo creation, “Blackbird,” like all Beatles songs, is attributed to “Lennon/McCartney.” This shared-credit situation has been known to irk McCartney, and yet even that tension doesn’t explain the unbridled assault of sarcasm and peeve that issued from “the cute Beatle” on this singular occasion.

  August 18, 1968, Abbey Road Studios, Studio 4, 11:15 a.m. Engineer’s notes:

  Band members came in fairly early (and fairly shagged-out) from another night of “creams and ales and whatnot.” Mini jam session. Lennon kept asking Starkey to “play quieter” and finally to “Stop! The drums in me head are all I need.” After a tea-and-jam-butties break, McCartley [sic] grabbed an acoustic and said, “Here’s something, see what you think,” then played a song called “Blackbird” in its entirety. Excellent song. Excellent, excellent song. Unbelievable song. Like God humming. When he finished, he suddenly became vituperative…

  Transcript from the audio tape:

  McCARTNEY [As the final notes of “Blackbird” ring out]: Well? What do you think? Anything to it? “Ugh,” right? Don’t say anything! I know. I’m sorry. Get the trash bin out! I’ll reimburse for the studio time. Please forgive me…

  RINGO: Well, I thought it was really pretty…

  McCARTNEY: Stop—it’s no “Octopus’s Garden”! Am I right? Let me play it again, in its entirety, just the way it came to me, when I was alone, writing it…

  [McCartney plays “Blackbird” again, from beginning to end, and again, it’s an impossibly beautiful and perfect composition. The other Beatles stare at their shoes.]

  McCARTNEY: Garbage, right? Yeesh! I am so sorry. SOOOOOO sorry. George, please forgive me. Do favor us with another of your sitar explorations so as to wash the taste of that dreck from our ears! Do, please! Where’s the sitar? Hurry, get a sitar!

  HARRISON: Well, I liked it…

  McCARTNEY: Shows what you know! I’m sorry. I’m just embarrassed. John! The Great John Lennon! Sir, I am so sorry to waste YOUR time with that!

  LENNON: Well…it’s a little lullaby-ish for my taste, though.

  McCARTNEY: Of course! It’s just a throwaway lullaby! People hate lullabys! They’re awful, awful! John, save the day and yowl us all one of your patented free-form political diatribes to obliterate the memory of my gummy treacle!

  HARRISON: Look, man, I think your sarcasm is unnecessary, you know? It’s going to be on the album and all, there’s no need—

  McCARTNEY: Oh! Do you think it’ll make the album?? Oh, will it?! Oh, thank you, George! Thank you! You deign to have one of my songs grace the next Beatles album? Because usually I do have to fight pretty hard to get my usual 90 percent of the songs on there next to your 10 percent! Oh, joy! Did you hear that, Ringo! I’m going to have a song on a real Beatles album! Me, Paul McCartney!

  [At this point, Harrison rises to leave—]

  McCARTNEY: Don’t leave! Don’t leave, please, we need you to noodle around in the background! Where’s that sitar?

  [Harrison slams the door—]

  McCARTNEY: Oh, no! Now who will noodle around? Nobody?

  LENNON: Look, man, we get it, you wrote a perfect song. Congratulations, but really, I mean, what’s next?

  YOKO: [unintelligible “artistic” clucking noises]

  McCARTNEY: YOKO! Is Yoko here? There you are, dear, under the covers! Do you play the “bed” now? Is it an instrument?

  Uh-oh, have I accidentally given you a new idea for a performance? Oh well, by all means please scream out one of your bloodcurdling antisongs to strip away the execrable beauty I just plastered all over the room because I just wrote the greatest FUCKING MELODY EVER FUCKING FUCK-WRITTEN! Let’s hear it one more time just to check—

  [Paul plays “Blackbird” again…and again, it is a perfect song. Note: no overdubs needed.]

  McCARTNEY: Yup: THE GREATEST SONG EVER WRITTEN! Glad I double-checked! Hey, where’s everybody going?

  [The remaining Beatles have left the room. McCartney, exhausted, stays behind and plays “Blackbird” to himself three more times, smiling the entire time.]

  I MISSPOKE

  I’m Rod Blogbert, candidate for Senate, and I approve this message.

  Rape is an awful act. The other day, in a TV interview, I misspoke. I used the wrong words—guilty, and pleasure—in the wrong way, and for those words, in the order they came out of my mouth, I apologize. The letters in the words were also at fault for having lined up in such a manner so as to form those wrong words, but since I am going to need those letters to deliver this apology, I’ll go easy on them—this time.

  As a candidate running for Senate, I want justice: both for the victims of sexual assault and for myself, for misspeaking. We have both been wronged.

  I have a compassionate heart, and right now it hurts—for those victims, as well as for my political career. The mistake I made was in the words my mouth spoke, not in the heart I have. If my heart had its own mouth, it would never have spoken those words in that order.

  But, I am sad to say, my mouth is not alone in its dastardly malfeasance. My lips formed many of the consonants I used in my interview, but they could not have done so without the cooperation of my teeth and tongue. Together, this “troublesome trio” conspired to misrepresent the intentions in my heart by forcing my mouth to emit sounds that in turn suggested that rape victims may experience something other than a horrible violation. I’m not certain how much my lungs had to do with all of this. I suspect that neither lung was aware of the scandalous, offensive, utterly retarded purpose that the air they expelled was put in service of during “The Great Misspeak.” Let me say that if I know my lungs, they would never have cooperated were they aware of what lay ahead for the air they were soon to expel through my vocal cords.

  This leads me to the big one: where was my brain in all of this? I’ll tell you where it was: nowhere to be found. My heart is in pain because my brain had abstained. Hey, that rhymes. Anyhow, my brain really needs to “show up” for these events where my mouth is talking. I’m thinking of employing a “brain/mouth” rule if you choose me for Senate.

  So let me be clear: I do not think that the words rape, guilty, and pleasure belong in the same sentence—or even paragraph. I probably shouldn’t have used the word retarded earlier, either, but I am typing this and my fingers may yet be attempting an overthrow. Oh, if only you all could hear what my heart is thinking!

  This, then, is my apology, and I hope it suffices. I have been asked to withdraw from the race by my party, my friends, my wife, and my conscience, but my gut won’t let me.

  I FOUND A JACKSON POLLOCK!

  Excuse me for jumpi
ng and shouting “Hooray!”

  But I found a Jackson Pollock today!

  It was under the stairs, behind some chairs.

  It had been there for years, we were all unawares.

  In a spare space a-clutter with old brooms and dustbins,

  in rurally rural old rural Wisconsin!

  At first I’d no idea, unsure what I’d found,

  some old thing worth nothing, thought I—

  nothing world renowned…

  But now I know it’s a Pollock and here’s how I know—

  all the splotches of paint are placed there just so.

  They “pop” and they mingle to coax forth a mood,

  they tell you a story, they force you to brood,

  upon their deep meaning, there’s just something MORE there

  than just splotches of paint that are going nowhere.

  So I know it’s a real one—

  a top-notch big deal one—

  the kind that will hang in a Met or a Getty,

  and when I know what it’s worth, will I sell it?

  You bet-y!

  But how will I prove it? There’s no autograph,

  I might show it to everyone and everyone will just laugh.

  I have searched for a fingerprint or a hair I could test,

  to prove that my Pollock is ol’ Jack at his best.

  I can’t find a one, not a single damn follicle—

  but I know if I did it would surely be Pollockle!

  Oh, relax, I am certain, no need to get colicky,

  the experts will swear that my Pollock is Pollocky.

  So, what was it doing in Grandmama’s storage?

  Forgotten before I went out on my forage?

  Let’s just say Grandma wandered, she roved and she mingled,

  before she was married, back when she was single.

  Famous names, it was rumored, she’d befriend and be-met,